The death penalty needs to remain dead

The unilateral restoration of the federal death penalty by Attorney General William Barr is unnecessary, both on moral and practical grounds. No citizens are taking to the streets asking for more executions. Families of victims are not clamoring for the execution of criminals. Research has shown the death penalty does not serve as a deterrent. It is more expensive to administer than a life sentence and it is carried out in a racist manner, with people of color more likely to receive death sentences.

For all of those reasons, support for the death penalty generally has been declining and rightfully so. That has led to fewer people dying at the hands of the state. Executions declined from 98 in 1999 to 25 in 2018.

New Mexico, proudly, is among the 21 states and the District of Columbia that have discontinued the death penalty, a move made in 2009 under then-Gov. Bill Richardson. In June, the New Mexico Supreme Court vacated the sentences of the last two inmates on death row in our state.

Chief among the reasons for stopping

executions is this simple fact: Too often, the state gets it wrong. The Death Penalty Information Center estimates that of all death sentences in the United States, 166 prisoners have been exonerated while on death row.

That is why the United States should not bring back the death penalty, especially the method Barr wants to use — injecting the drug pentobarbital to cause death, a controversial protocol. As has been the Trump administration’s tendency, announcing the use of the one-drug protocol as decided — without going through the required rules process — will mean Barr’s edict will be challenged in court.

The U.S. currently is embroiled in a lawsuit over the three drugs most frequently used to execute criminals. Any change in how the state kills prisoners will need to be reviewed, something the announcement conveniently omits.

“Saying that you are going to adopt a protocol is not the same thing as having a protocol properly adopted through the required administrative procedures,” Robert Dunham, the executive director of the Death Penalty Information Center, told CNN.

Reinstating the death penalty is a political move rather than one designed to deter crime. Support for the death penalty plays to the Republican base, since almost 80 percent of self-identified Republicans say they back such executions.

Among the general population, approval of the death penalty for crimes like murder is 54 percent, according to the Pew Research Center. That’s up from the low of 49 percent in 2018. While it’s unclear why support grew, at news of the increase in support for the death penalty, Pope Francis told Roman Catholics that his church now opposes the death penalty in all instances.

Bringing back the death penalty also reflects a bizarre passion of President Donald Trump, a longtime death penalty enthusiast.

Remember, Trump is the guy who took out advertisements as a private citizen in 1989 calling for the death penalty for the five young men accused in the Central Park jogger case. Those men later were found to be innocent, which is why the death penalty is problematic. Innocent people can die.

As candidate Trump, his reaction to the shooting deaths of two police officers in Mississippi was to say, “We have people who are, these two, animals who shot the cops … the death penalty, it should be brought back and it should be brought back strong.” Last year, the president brought up the idea of executing drug dealers, an idea he says he borrowed from Chinese President Xi Jinping.

Barr immediately announced that five people — all killers of children, the worst sorts of criminals — would be executed as a result of the policy change, starting in December. One of the cases involves a crime committed just over the border from New Mexico on the Navajo Nation — which by the way, opposes the death penalty.

We should all oppose the death penalty. Not because evil does not deserve to be stamped out, but because the death penalty does not reduce crime and is applied unfairly. Life sentence without parole sufficiently punishes the worst criminals. And unlike death, it is not a final solution.